Your Website is going to promote your
business to one of the world's largest audiences, so it is
important to identify exactly who that target audience is.
Once you have decided who you are trying to reach,
planning your design will be a lot easier.

For
example, if you are targeting the financial sector, then
your Website will probably use conservative colours to
project an image of respectability and dependability.
However, in aiming your Website at young people, perhaps
reviewing games, the use of bright colours, together with
a lot of graphics, is more likely.

In the paragraphs that follow, we will
outline some of the key aspects that you should consider
when planning your Website. We hope that by doing this, we
will help to structure your existing ideas and possibly
generate new ones.

Design Considerations

The key to an effective design is to bring
together appealing presentation and interesting content.

Presentation
is about the 'look and feel' of your Website. You should
think about colours, logos, navigation and layout.

The colour of your Website may already be
decided by your corporate branding, but if not, we suggest
you think about colours that will reflect the image you
want to project.

Avoid too many 'bells and whistles' in your
Website. Adding sound, movies, scrolling text, page
counters or just too many animated graphics will make your
Website slow to download and detract from its primary
purpose.

It is important to remember that not all
users will have the most up-to-date browsers or the latest
in PC technology. So, the simpler your Website the more
visitors it will attract.

Navigation
should be easy and intuitive. Well presented menus or
meaningful icons work well visually and are
straightforward to use.

The content or text should be interesting,
accurate and informative. Eye-catching graphics or
headlines, that give a quick preview of what can be found
in the site, will keep visitors interested.

The size of each page should be little more
than the height of a user's screen. Research has shown
that web users do not like to scroll down to find
information.

A sensible balance of text and graphics,
with text divided into logical sections and graphics used
to highlight points of interest.

There
should be consistency within the Website. Headings should
be in the same size and colour font throughout the
Website. Icons used for navigation should retain the same
order of layout on each page and generally one background
colour used throughout gives better continuity.

How we can help

If
you use the Internet regularly, you will probably know
exactly what you want from your Website and we expect that
this synopsis of design considerations will simply endorse
your own experiences.

Alternatively, you may be new to the web
and rather than this page assisting you with planning your
Website, it may be just another source of confusion! If
your knowledge is not sufficient to plan your Website, we
will do that for you too.

Either way, if you
contact
us, we promise to discuss your requirements in a way
that you feel comfortable with.